LyrArc Article Gist
In this insightful essay Peggy Noonan, former spokesperson for president Reagan, says that Republicans like Speaker Ryan with the Republican Health Care bill are making the same error made by president Obama.. Noonan says she had suggested a different way for president Obama to show compassion for the uninsured- first wait till the 2008 financial crisis was tackled, tackled waste and fraud in Medicare first, then look at the option of expanding Medicare to help the uninsured, and not the approach taken of swiftly focussing on the Affordable Care Act early in the first term disregarding Republican objections. She says Republicans are making the same mistake now by ignoring the impact the bill would have on Trump's base of working class Americans who may be affected by the bill's provisions not taking into account incomes in offering incentives or subsidies. Noonan says Trump did get one thing right in calling it a "carnage" for the worsening opioid epidemic in America which has hit rural areas and parts of the midwest hard. Noonan says Eberstadt has correctly documented the collapse in working class Americans wages and standard of living, and Caldwell the opioid epidemic at another level to their health. She also supports journalist Carlson who questioned Speaker Paul Ryan's judgement about eliminating the tax on wealthy investors in new legislation in a Fox News interview, as she says responding to the sense of America at the moment means listening to the sense of being left out of ordinary Americans, who have done not as well as the wealthy who have benefitted from a surging stock market.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Rex Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State takes a strong stand on North Korean missile testing and nuclear program in a visit to Seoul and Beijing. He said the U.S. would be forced to take pre-emptive action "if they elevate their threat of their weapons program"  to an unacceptable level. Continuing a policy of the Obama administration following missile tests by North Korea, the Trump administration has rejected any talks with North Korea. Tillerson said that "the policy of strategic patience has ended." It was also meant to signal U.S. intentions before Tillerson goes to Beijing from Seoul. President Trump commented on Twitter; "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help." Because China sees North Korea as a bargaining chip with the U.S., Japan and South Korea, the situation has ended repeatedly in a impasse with the North Korean nuclear and missile program continuing during the Bush and Obama administrations. This has also meant that North Korea was unlikely to collapse on its own, with China pursuing a policy of using North Korea as part of its defense policies in the region, as pointed out by Sanger in this report. As the North's missile program continues the U.S., and with the North seeing the missile program as the only way to ensure the survival of the regime, the U.S. needed to come up with a new way to tackle the situation.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The 1985 hit "Small Town" by John Mellencamp is about Seymour, Indiana. Republican State Representative Jim Lucas says the city of Seymour welcomes immigrants legally here who are properly vetted. The concern is about migrants not vetted and not legally here. At a recent city council meeting Lucas attended it was decided not to go ahead with an economic development agenda. Says Lucas- “However, Seymour has changed drastically in just the past few years, and many of us are obviously concerned about the direction we are headed,” he added. New immigrant cases or migrant arrivals for Jackson county, Indiana, where Seymour is located went up to 435 in 2024 from 66 in 2021. It is at that point that the welcome center idea ran into opposition in this small town in Indiana, an hour from Indianapolis population 21,000 in Jackson County. As the town's population mix changes - it was 1% Hispanic in 1990, then 5% Hispanic in 2000- jumping in two decades of Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden to 25% Hispanic, questions besides economic about the sense of uneasiness of resident came up. Also of cultural literacy of the state of Indiana, and of the history of the state within the Union forged by Washington and Lincoln, FDR and Eisenhower, and of Wendell Wilkie of Elwood, Indiana. Unemployment rate for Jackson County is 3.3%, median income $63,000, home ownership 57%. Issues were not about the economy alone, and about how many immigrants could be absorbed and the cultural and language literacy of arriving migrants. There were issues about the perceived crime rate (metrics show traffic related offenses were up), and about drawing too much of the school's resources as English learning went up slowing learning in the schools. Republican State Representative Jim Lucas says it is crowding the health care clinic downtown with immigrants. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Turkey's parliament authorizes the government to take steps needed for national security as Islamic State forces approach its borders, attacking the Kurdish town of Kobani. Turkey is reluctant to participate in the coalition against Islamic State until the Obama administration makes clear what its policy is in relation to the bigger problem it sees causing the conflict- the Assad regime's violent suppression in Syria. Turkey wants the U.S. to impose a no-fly zone so that the Assad air force is grounded. Turkey also has to consider the protection of Kurdish towns from the Islamic State because of public opinion in the Kurdish population of Turkey.

LyrArc Article Gist
Interesting and quite useful from a sociological and psychological point of view, that people believe what they want to believe. Even today writes Slackman, the Arabs and Muslims from Dubai malls to people one meets in a park in Algiers, cafes in Riyadh, and in shops and places all over Cairo, say the USA organized 9/11 so that they could attack 2 Muslim states, Iraq and Afghanistan. If we changed it a bit and said Rumsfeld and Cheney got the perfect excuse to attack Afghanistan's Taliban government from 9/11. It created the kind of fears in the US public about terrorists, individual, or state sponsored terrorism like Iraq's against the Marsh Shiites after the Kuwait war (which was a personal affront to both Rumsfeld and Cheney as they let it happen right under their eyes), then one can extend that to say Rumsfeld and Cheney felt they now had the opportunity to get Saddam out. So once you have the US even for good moral reason eager to intervene, this eagerness may not require too much of a stretch to be seen as the US administration engineering this atmosphere by organizing 9/11, or by letting it happen. This is true for an Arab public that feels humiliated and sees a loss of respect from all the setbacks they have suffered, including in Egypt where a President has maintained himself in power for thirty long years and has American support. And most of these people haven't left their surroundings, so they haven't seen the world outside. What they beleieve is only what is possible from what they can see possible from their immediate surroundings. From a -sociological and psychological perspective this is certainly possible and even realistic. When Friedman in the New York Times says its shameless that the 2 Republican candidates can speak of being change agents when Republicans have been in power for 8 years, and still the Republican faithful and some independents believe this, they have not lost their wits but may see this in terms of their gut feel and in terms of their own personal experiences and surroundings. Even when Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal sees little hope from either candidate when it comes to lobbyists influencing them and proof of this from lobbyists for Fannie and Freddie as their senior advisors. Then its still possible for Republican faithful, however weird it may appear to an informed observer,to see McCain and Palin as agents of change. Same is true for Obama. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Saudi government announced sharp cuts in spending and subsidies to cut the deficit in 2016. The deficit in 2015 was about $98 billion or 367 billion riyals , according to Al Arabiya Saudi news channel. In 2016 the budget is designed to cut the deficit to $87 billion or 326 billion riyals. The 2016 budget is for 840 billion riyals, compared to 975 billion riyals in 2015. Saudi Arabia's foreign exchange reserves of $640 billion could be exhausted at this rate by 2020, experts say. Actions being taken by the government include increasing the price of some grades of gasoline sold domestically by 50%, as subsidies are being cut. The drop in oil prices to about $35-$40 is hurting Russia, Saudis and Venezuela. The Saudis have increased defense spending for conflicts in Yemen, and in other areas, as they oppose Iran and Russia in the Iraq- Syria conflict.

LyrArc Article Gist
A look at the history of the founding of Pakistan and the 60 years since, looking all the way back to Muslim League's activities in the 1930's under Jinnah, and the failure of politicians and the military to help build Pakistan and improve the lives of its people. One by one the generals and the politicians, including Ms Bhutto and Sharif, have all failed and the dim prospects that it would be different this time with a new elected government.

LyrArc Article Gist
The new prime minister of Pakistan Abbasi consults with former prime minister Sharif in Murree, Pakistan, after the Supreme Court disqualifies Sharif from the position. Sharif's brother, Shahbaz, the chief minister of Punjab province will contest a by-election for parliament to replace Abbasi.

LyrArc Article Gist
A recent Deutsche Bank study points to the pro-cyclical nature of oil prices in this decade where oil price increases do not lead to decreased worldwide consumption. The IEA forecast is for 1.64 million barrels of oil a day in increased coonsumption in 2013 compared to 2011, which hides a drop in consumption of 640,000 barrels a day in OECD countries. That is offset by higher demand in China, the Middle East and Russia. Middle East consumption is about 80% of consumption in China, and oil price increases lead to higher growth in these countries and Russia leading to increased oil consumption reinforcing a pro-cyclical cycle. What is not clearly understood is how this changes with weaker economic growth. Additional factor to consider is future increasing growth of oil consumption in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam and other developing countries that offset reductions in Chinese consumption as China's growth rate slows.

LyrArc Article Gist
The $787 million settlement is for defamation damages for Dominion Voting Systems and its owner State Street Capital. On the fundamental issue of free and fair elections and freely elected governments, the settlement does not ask for an explicit statement by Fox News of misconduct. To understand what happened one has to look at the origins of the FNN in the Melbourne Herald of 1920-1950 under Keith Murdoch and the political controversy pursued to increase readership in that period. NYT says it has an implicit plea of "no contest" to several pre trial findings by the presiding judge Eric Davis- "The evidence does not support that Fox News Network television carried good faith disinterested reporting." NYT explains this as the judge saying that spreading a conspiracy theory does not fall under legally protected "news gathering." The presiding judge also decided that - "Evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that it is CRYSTAL clear none of the statements related to Dominion (by Fox News) are true." As the case is not going to trial readers may ask what happened not just in this case but in Fox News and Trump over the last decade that caused risks to the framework of democracy, of elections and transfer of power setup by the founding fathers. Fox News Network has its origins in the Melbourne Herald of the 1920-1950 period when Keith Murdoch setup the business in Australia that was expanded a generation later by Rupert Murdoch. Keith Murdoch was heavily influenced in his newspaper career by Lord Northcliffe, and by Lord Beaverbrook, a Canadian from New Brunswick, who both created a form of journalism that used political controversy to increase readership between the two world wars and in the period after that to 1957. The readership of these papers ran to 3-4 million which in that period in Britain or Australia was huge. Beaverbook took controversial positions that were built on his idea that the bloc Britain should represent was Canada, Australia and Britain with the British Empire, to have little to do with Europe or even the US. For this reason he did not support Britain's entry into the Second World War, or Britain joining in the Cold War against the Soviets till the Berlin Blockade. British prime minister Macmillan held back announcing Britain joining the European Economic Community (predecessor to the EU), because of the power of the Beaverbrook newspapers who were not interested in Europe. And British prime minister Clement Attlee faced the bitter opposition of Churchill and Beaverbrook/Northcliffe papers in sending Mountbatten to negotiate a transfer of power to India in 1947. The win of Labour's Clement Attlee in the 1951 election was opposed by Beaverbrook using the most sensational language. One can see the origins of what happened in the Trump period in the newspaper origins from the 1900-1957 period of Australian and British television networks. Of Keith Murdoch, National Biography of the Australian National University says- he supported the conservative stances of his time, was a remarkable entrepreneur and organizer of industry. Yet it also says his judgement was faulty. That he had "no real social philosophy"and lacked the originality to make useful contributions to public policy. Of Rupert Murdoch it can be said that he was also a remarkable entrepreneur and organizer of industry who built the newspaper business in Australia from one Adelaide paper left to him by Keith Murdoch. Yet his judgement proved faulty and there was no real concept of public policy or "real social philosophy." There is also the fact that like Beaverbrook from New Brunswick, Murdoch from western Australia was raised in the period of the British Empire and Commonwealth, had no real experience or grasp of the idea that is America set by the founding fathers and renewed by Lincoln, then FDR. An awareness of the origins of Murdoch's FNN is useful because it helps the American public close this chapter in the way democracies functioned in the past, and write better chapters for the future before us, keeping alive the idea that is America.     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A professor from Harvard's Kennedy school describes the Hungarians failure to remember the 1956 Hungarian uprising crushed by the Soviet Union as migrants suffering enormous hardship make their way to Keleti train station in Budapest, Hungary. The Orban government in Hungary refused to let migrants take trains to Austria and Germany. Chancellor Merkel said the Schengen Agreement allowing free movement itself was being called into question. The Orban government later relented and put migrants on buses to Vienna. Throughout this crisis as media showed pictures of the hardships suffered by migrants, and chancellor Merkel assured asylum for hundreds of thousands of migrants, Obama and Harper were silent on the issue. The appalling numbers tell the story, says Ignatieff- with about 1500 for the U.S. and 166 for the UK, according to news reports. He is very critical of Obama, Cameron and Harper, representing the U.S., UK, and Canada, for doing so little.

LyrArc Article Gist
Nicolas Tenzer, who teaches at Sciences Po in Paris, says that the new relationship between U.S. president Trump  and the French president Macron, is a result of Macron having the capacity to react quickly and follow his intuition. He says there is even a bit of seduction in this for the younger Macron to bring the older Trump back into the circle, knowing that Europe needed someone who could talk to the American president in a way that others did not choose to or just could not. This includes chancellor Merkel of Germany. The relationship started out awkwardly with Macron expressing some disdain after the Trump decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement. Soon after the initial differences Macron's spokesperson Castaner said that it was an important task, that "of bringing the president of the United States back into the circle." It is an intelligent move and typical of Macron to move quickly and do things that make sense in the interest of the EU and America. On Bastille day the French are also honoring the U.S. for the sacrifices in two wars, and it made sense to bring the U.S. president in so that other differences could be set aside to work together on issues such as terrorism, mutual security, and trade. It is not uncommon to have seen such differences, and they were handled differently in the past. German chancellor Schmidt had a difficult relationship with president Jimmy Carter. Carter with his rural Georgia background as a peanut farmer was seen in the way Trump is seen in many parts of Europe. President Bush was also treated with skepticism in Germany, more for policies of going to war in Iraq.  For Macron it shows his uncanny ability to do things which for other people may not sound convincing. Being critical of the U.S. president may also have set the stage for a real relationship because it may have earned him the respect of being someone who had his views and was not hesitant to express them, just as he was on Algeria and other issues. And yet willing to have a friendly, open conversation with someone from a different background and with different views. At Lyrarc we singled out the Spiegel Macron interview on the fast train to Bordeaux, as something that showed him to be comfortable and calm  in unusual settings, and not affected by the magnitude of the task at hand or people's opinions. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
China's BYD started in electric batteries and expanded into electric cars. It has emerged as the dominant electric car company in the world as China now has half of the electric cars on the road in the world. 35% of exports of electric cars are from China. Keith Bradsher of NYT reports from Shenzen that its first car was made in 2007 of poor quality, similar to Toyota in the 1930's as it tried car manufacturing for the first time. It has surpassed Tesla in making electric cars. In each of the last 2 years it has increased electric car sales by one million to reach electric car sales on 3 million. EV sales in China were up in 2023 to 9.49 million cars giving BYD the largest share of 31%., by comparison US electric car sales were 1.2 million. New assembly lines are being built in Brazil, Hungary and Thailand. And new lines are planned for Mexico and Indonesia. This kind of growth was seen only by General Motors in 1946 after the end of the war. It also shows the progress China is making. In solar panels something like the addition of 900 million solar panels meeting the entire increase in electricity demand for each year, so that emissions targets can be met earlier than planned to tackle climate change.  The same changes are happening in electric cars. China now has 40% of electric cars or gasoline/electric plug in cars going up to 50%. For export China is building large carrier ships, the first that will take 5000 cars for export to the Netherlands. The lowest priced electric car model the Seagull was priced at $11,000. BYD's lowering of manufacturing costs have given it the ability to price the cars to attract new car buyers.  Wang Chuanfu who studied at Central Southern University in Changsha known for its battery research, was an engineer who started the company in the 1990's to make batteris for Motorola. Between 2003-2006 he experimented with making cars in the hope of making electric cars. Stalled efforts in 2009 and 2011 were met with arenewed effort in 2016 trying a new approach to cut costs by developing a battery where supplies of lithium or cobalt would not be a constraint. He developed a new battery using iron and phospate to replace lithium cobalt batteries. A big break came in 2020 with the Blade battery that increased range to the level of cobalt lithium batteries at a much smaller cost. BYD hired German Audi designers for new model design. This time BYD was in the right position to build a car company matching all others with costs lower by about 35% than VW for some models. This comes from- lower costs to make in China, making its own parts inside the company for 75% of parts compared to VW only about 35%, and by the savings from its battery research.  BYD has shown ability to shift with market needs and opportunities. In 2022 assisted driving was facing hurdles, BYD had second thoughts about the new technology, by 2023 as it was increasing in use BYD committed $14 billion in autonomous driving technology. Driving range is a problem for people in urban areas going back to their villages in China. BYD has an advantage here compared to Tesla- it makes hybrid plug ins that account for half its sales. Toyota has also had emphasis on hybrid plug ins where it missed the opportunity was that it moved very slowly on all electric cars not realizing how fast things were moving outside it's world. This is the situation America also faces in 2024 and beyond who can deliver on the infrastructure capabilities, new research ,and tap American potential to compete in this new world where one innovation will follow another. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Bernie Sanders with 46% of the delegates, 13.4 million votes, 22 states, and many of the young people in the U.S. behind him, told a news reporter at his home in the final sprint two weeks before the election- he plans to see the major planks of the Democratic platform implemented. He said Clinton is progressive on a number of issues, but the platform is more progressive with upward mobility a critical concern. Sanders played a critical role in shaping the platform. He says he opposes someone from Wall Street in positions of Treasury Secretary, Trade Representative, and will make known his views who would be best in these positions, including Attorney General. Sanders is supported in the Senate by Senators Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren. Warren has campaigned with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, and both support minimum wage, women's rights. WIth a win for Democrats in the Senate Sanders will become either the chairman of the Budget Committee, or with his preference chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. His main goal now is to see key economic Cabinet positions that affect upward mobility, intergenerational mobility, which is damaged today for the middle and working class, go to persons who would do the most to improve it.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The truth is very different from the rhetoric coming from the Obama administration about helping Main Street America and ordinary workers against "fat-cat bankers," says Goldfarb. Under the Obama administration banks have grown larger and gained more influence over administration decisions. No conditions were made part of the agreement that would require banks to lend a portion of the money handed out to the banks to ordinary borrowers. And not much of significance was done to help homeowners under water, which would enable a faster recovery. In this respect the policies slanted in favor of banks of the Obama administration worsened the prospects of an economic recovery. Experts from Reagan advisor Martin Feldstein- who as early as 2008 advocated serious help to homeowners under water to reduce principal and interest- to the FDIC's Sheila Bair and Princeton Prof. Krugman, across the ideological spectrum, perceived this being in the national interest. Feldstein's first op-ed on his plan appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 3/7/2008, followed by ones on 4/15/2008, 10/4/2008, 1/20/2010/ 10/12/2011 in WSJ, and a oped on 10/30/2008 in the Washington Post, repeating the call for siginificant debt reduction to homeowners. Banks had extraordinary influence on successive administrations in the U.S., both Republican and Democratic- the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations- so that policy actions could be distorted from what would otherwise take place. A study by two University of Michigan professors shows that banks did not increase lending after receiving government money. Instead taxpayer money was used to invest in risky securities for profits from short term price movements, resulting in gains of about 10% in investment returns. Ran Duchin, one of the two professors, says helping ordinary borrowers was not the most profitable use of capital for banks. Without the necessary conditions from the Obama administration, the banks depolyed capital in ways that did not help the economy. Similiarly when banks needed to be restructured no preparatory action was taken because of resistance within the administration- a request by President Obama to Treasury Secretary Geithner for preparing a plan for the restructuring of Citigroup was ignored, according to a report by Goldfarb and Wallsten on 9/17/2011 in the Washington Post....

LyrArc Article Gist
Shiller, Kashyap, Mishkin, Slaughter, Stein, Stulz, Rajan and others are part of a 15 academic economists group called the Squam Lake Group. They first met at a conference in November 2008 at Squam Lake in New Hampshire. The group has come up with a report that they hope gets the prominence of the 9/11 report. It is called the Squam Lake Report. The book will be introduced in a conference at Columbia University by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. Some of the economists have little faith in regulators and a new Financial Stability oversight Council led by Treasury Secretary Geithner. (Stulz, Kashyap). The group sees need for better disclosure of risks of financial products, especially retirement savings products.The editor Seth Itchik sees the book as today's version of the 1938 book by Harvard and Tufts economists called "An Economic Program for American Democracy." The motivation for this effort in a field where economists have different opinions, is to build a consensus for decisive action by Congress and the government of the U.S. Two new suggestions that are not in the Congressional bills for financial reform. One is issuance of contingent convertible bonds or CoCo bonds. Banks would be encouraged or required to issue such debt which would convert into equity in a crisis. These funds would help recapitalize a bank in a crisis with no taxpayer liability. Another new proposal is to have a fraction of each year's bonus pool for banking executives to be held separately- if the bank ran into trouble, that portion of pay would be withheld from senior managers. And the group sees political aspects and lobbying making sound plans less implementable in Congress. Congress lets regulators curb pay practices and coordinate other actions which has not worked in the past and during the crisis. Congress has even in its best effort acted on only some of the things needed in its bills- this includes higher capital requirements, and compulsory "living wills" for the largest financial institutions, and the Volcker Rule. The rules for derivatives are still being negotiated by Blance Lincoln who introduced this provision, with the result being more transparency. If it is watered down it would not ensure the strict separation of derivatives trading on the capital accounts of banks that Blanche Lincoln envisaged. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Unemployment reaches 6.2% in Oct. 2014, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and the Australian economy faces the risk of a recession in 2015.